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Email Limits and Restrictions When Using Plusnet SMTP Servers

ashburnhamins
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Email Limits and Restrictions When Using Plusnet SMTP Servers

I have business broadband with Plusnet. I am considering using the Plusnet SMTP servers for sending my business transactional emails (no bulk email campaigns, just regular day-to-day emails). I've tested a couple on Outlook and all work fine. Just have a couple of questions first if anyone can help?

Is there a daily/monthly send limit? Not sure if this is right but seen there is a 1,000 hourly limit which seems very generous, does this mean I could send 24,000 a day? I'm nowhere near this limit but just want to know where I stand so as not to break the rules.

Also, I have a form on my website that gets emailed to customers, can I use the Plusnet SMTP server for that also or is this not possible (i.e. it needs to be sent via Plusnet Broadband)?

Thanks

25 REPLIES 25
Townman
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Re: Email Limits and Restrictions When Using Plusnet SMTP Servers

Hi,

A warm welcome to the forums.

So long as you do not exceed the published limits, all should be fine.

It is not clear from your description if your web based form is SENDING the email via its own SMTP or SUBMITTING the email to your own SMTP, that is Plusnet.  It is more usual for web forms to use their own SMTP service and simply email the form to your mail box.

If the form is submitting the email to a SMTP server, you can use the SMTP relay server from anywhere, so long as the sending agent can facilitate an authenticated connection to the service - that is use a user name and password.

I would counsel on NOT USING THE DEFAULT ACCOUNT details for either sending or submitting from a web form, less that address becomes compromised.  I recommend that you set up an additional mailbox on the account and use that for the sending authentication details.  If those details on your website become compromised, you can kill the additional account details and create a new one.

Go to manage email in the account user portal

Create a new mailbox - for example form.mail@

Assign a password

 

In your web mailing application

SEND to the email address form.mail@account.plus.com

or

SUBMIT to relay.plus.net using the userID form.mail@account.plus.com and the password you set up above

Superusers are not staff, but they do have a direct line of communication into the business in order to raise issues, concerns and feedback from the community.

ashburnhamins
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Re: Email Limits and Restrictions When Using Plusnet SMTP Servers

Thanks Townman and good advice on setting up the additional inbox.

ashburnhamins
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Re: Email Limits and Restrictions When Using Plusnet SMTP Servers

So after fully changing over to Plusnet SMTP servers I get hit with the following error message:

SMTP Error: Too many rcpts in time period from this IP

This was during a small batch of about 40 transactional emails sent out in a 2 minute period. Something we maybe do once a day at most.

Does the 1000 hourly limit work backwards? (i.e. 1000 / 60 = 16.6 emails per minute limit)

Gandalf
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Re: Email Limits and Restrictions When Using Plusnet SMTP Servers

Thanks for getting in touch @ashburnhamins Sorry for the delayed staff response.

As far as I'm aware the limit to sending emails via our SMTP server is indeed to 1000 unique recipients within a 1 hour period, and another limit is that one single transaction email can't be addressed to more than 200 recipients. Ref Here.

If you try to exceed the limit I'd imagine the email just won't send which it looks like you've encountered. If the 40 emails you've tried to send within 2 minutes contains less than 200 recipients each, I'd have to go away and try to find out the answer regarding why they were rejected although it could be possible that you're right that it's 16.6 emails per minute. 

From 31st October 2022, I no longer have a regular presence here as I’ve moved on to a new role.
Anoush Mortazavi
Plusnet
ashburnhamins
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Re: Email Limits and Restrictions When Using Plusnet SMTP Servers

Each of the 40 emails were sent to a different single email address so no mass sending going on, just 40 normal basic emails to individual recipients.

This is the only thing we do that goes quickly but we could effectively slow it down if there is some kind of limit per minute type thing going on. Are you able to find out and let me know so I know where we stand?

EmilyD
Plusnet Help Team
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Re: Email Limits and Restrictions When Using Plusnet SMTP Servers

Hi @ashburnhamins,

 

I have asked our products team about this and have been advised that the limits vary depending whether you're sending from the Plusnet network or a different network. Please can you confirm whether you were using a Plusnet connection when attempting to send these emails?

If this post resolved your issue please click the 'This fixed my problem' button
 Emily D
 Plusnet Help Team
ashburnhamins
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Re: Email Limits and Restrictions When Using Plusnet SMTP Servers

This small batch was from another network. All our internal emails are sent via Plusnet network but this specific batch and a few other emails we send are from another network. Is it possible to know what restrictions are on non-plusnet network sending?

JOLO
Plusnet Alumni (retired)
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Re: Email Limits and Restrictions When Using Plusnet SMTP Servers

Hi @ashburnhamins

 

There's been a couple of forum posts related and I think this one will help to answer the question.

 

 

The limits for sending over a Plusnet connection are 1000 recipients per hour (or 250 recipients per email). Off network, it's a lot less (300 per hour and 250 per email). Our Webmail platform has stricter policies applied to customers using it from outside of the UK and one of these policies is to limit the number of recipients per email to a maximum of 10.

 

 

MisterW
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Re: Email Limits and Restrictions When Using Plusnet SMTP Servers

Off network, it's a lot less (300 per hour and 250 per email)

I'm not sure that explains why the OP sending 40 to single recipients was failing. Unless the 300/hr is actually calculated as 5/min ?

@JOLO lets see if @EmilyD  gets a definitive answer from products... 

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ashburnhamins
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Re: Email Limits and Restrictions When Using Plusnet SMTP Servers

@MisterW Correct that this hasn't answered my question but an extra bit of knowledge knowing there is a lower limit for off network sending. Fingers crossed I can get a definite answer about the per minute limit or whatever is causing this.

Just for the record, after sending no emails for about an hour I went back to sending normally and had no errors since. Reluctant to try a batch like this again until I've had an answer.

 

(P.S.@widgetwilk39 Think you should start a new thread for your problem as it is unrelated to this.)

Mads
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Re: Email Limits and Restrictions When Using Plusnet SMTP Servers

Hey all,

The info @JOLO provided is the info we have received from our products team on this.

 

Give us a nudge if you need any further assistance.

Townman
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Re: Email Limits and Restrictions When Using Plusnet SMTP Servers

@ashburnhamins

Are you able to check the geolocation data for the IP address of the ‘other network’?

I’m wondering if that network provider (BT?) might be having the same experience as Plusnet encounters with pre-loved IP ranges and over protective systems believing the U.K. used IP addresses are located over seas thereby applying inappropriate restrictions?

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ashburnhamins
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Re: Email Limits and Restrictions When Using Plusnet SMTP Servers

@Townman 

The "other network" is sending via our website. Our website host is 1&1 and when looking into where our server is based it seems to come back as Germany.

Townman
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Re: Email Limits and Restrictions When Using Plusnet SMTP Servers


@JOLO wrote:

Hi @ashburnhamins

Our Webmail platform has stricter policies applied to customers using it from outside of the UK and one of these policies is to limit the number of recipients per email to a maximum of 10.

@JW 

Semantics!!?

Given the advice that email submission is coming from a 1&1 platform located in Germany can you please clarify / confirm if the above statement really meant "Webmail" (the web based email client) and is therefore not relevant or was it a misnomer for the SMTP server which would be very relevant?


 

Superusers are not staff, but they do have a direct line of communication into the business in order to raise issues, concerns and feedback from the community.